10,000

That's right, I finally reached my 10,000th blog view yesterday!! I can't actually believe that so many of you are continuing to read my ramblings - thanks so much :)

I thought I'd do a quick post dedicated to all my trips since I started the blog. I suppose this could act as a bit of a catch up for any new readers, as well as a celebration of all the wonderful things I've experienced and incredible people I've met over the past two years.

East Coast USA

New York - Philadelphia - Washington DC - Knoxville - Nashville - Atlanta - Orlando - Miami. In three weeks. Possibly the most hardcore travelling I've done to date. These first two trips are the reason I started the blog, which is pretty crazy considering how much it's come along now!

Started off the trip with Rach and Ferris as well as Aimee to celebrate Rach's 18th birthday! We managed to pick the rainiest cloudiest day to visit the Statue of Liberty and to be honest were pretty underwhelmed by how big it was... Still, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and it was still a pretty good day.

WE MET ED SHEERAN. In Nashville after a Snow Patrol concert at which he was the support act. He smelled wonderful where as I was sweaty and horrible and hadn't washed my clothes for far too long. Sorry about that Ed.

Our first basketball game! Heat vs Pistons and Heat won it by a mile. We also got on the big screen by dancing like loons whilst people around us held up giant cardboard cut outs of H E A T.

Peru, Chile and Bolivia

Lima - Cusco - Arequipa - Arica - Iquique - San Pedro de Atacama - Uyuni - Potosi - Sucre - La Paz - Copacobana - Isla del Sol - Cusco - Huacachina - Lima. A beautiful continent full of beautiful people. I'd go back there in a heartbeat.

Peru: This was actually taken on our return to Peru at our last stop in a place called Huacachina. It was a great place to end the trip, with our good friend Sam from Aus, pretty much just partying all night and eating BBQ chicken wings all day. In this picture we'd decided to go on a midday booze cruise on the tiny lake with a surprisingly strong current in the middle of the oasis town. Such a great memory :)

Chile: Arica, the dryest city in the world, where in 10 years in rains only enough to fill one tea cup. 25 degrees everyday without fail. What an incredible place.

Bolivia: Sugar Daddy, The Cow (that's me...), G-meister General and Evester, setting out on three day 4x4 tour of the salares and salt flats. The trip consisted of the absolute coldest nights I've ever experienced, as well as the most breath-taking views.

Eurotrip 2012

Prague - Vienna - Budapest. A trip to reunite all the homies after a year away at university and travelling.

Prague: For some reason we decided to climb a really big hill just to see what was at the top. If I remember correctly, there really wasn't much up there, but the view was pretty special.

Vienna: This is from the night out where we went to the club 'Flex' and got invited on stage by the DJs simply because we were 'foreign'. Great night, from chucking shoes at Peter to the wall of sweets in the bathroom. Even though I wasn't wowed by the rest of the city I had a really good night.

Budapest: Since we're dead mature and all we decided to spend a day renting go carts and bikes and ride around the park. One of my absolute highlights of the trip as Pete and I rented a tandem and failed miserably at riding it. We also enjoyed ice creams and played in the musical fountain.

Abersoch- Girly Summer Holiday

A week holiday with all my favourite girls from high school. Unfortunately I didn't blog about this at the time but we had a lovely time chilling out at the beach and doing some serious charity shopping, whilst sleeping in a lovely cottage we rented.

The beautiful girlies. We decided we weren't too old to fit on this little train ride around the park and all six of us crammed into the back seat, making the ride rather squished.

This was pretty much our own private beach, about 15 minutes walk from the house and hidden away from the main busy one. This is also the beach that destroyed my apparently indestructible camera that had survived three months in the USA and South America... 

Five days in Amsterdam

Another one I didn't blog about - sorry fellas! - because I only really started blogging again in January where as this trip was in November. In short we stayed in a caravan, visited a lot of Van Gogh exhbitions, the Botanical Gardens, Anne Frank's House and a fair few coffee shops. You know, the usual Amsterdam thing.

Note to self: Going on a holiday with four boys and no girls to a place like Amsterdam is probably not the smartest thing you could have done.

Me and the guys chilling in a pretty cool coffee shop in the Red Light District. Going with four guys means you spend a little too much time in that area of town.

I met Desiree and Sophie from the Machu Picchu trek!! We went out for a lovely traditional Dutch meal and I tried Bitterballen which I am a BIG fan of. It was great to be reunited with some old travel friends :)

We LOVED the Botanical Gardens. I can't remember the exact price anymore but I know it was pretty reasonable (especially if you have a student card) and they also have a butterfly house!

Eurotrip 2013

Siegburg, Cologne and Bonn - Krakow - Vienna - Bratislava - Budapest - Belgrade - Sarajevo - Mostar - Novalja, Pag (Hideout Festival!) - Zagreb - Dubrovnik.

I spent the first four nights with my friend Mani who I met in Cusco, Peru. We had such a great time chilling in the sunshine, swimming, sharing a few beers and throwing popcorn at each other.

Highlights picture created by my wonderful friend Mitch. I joined the trip at picture number nine. I can't believe how much we did in such a short space of time!

Mitch and I chilling at the lake in Bratislava, one of my favourite pictures from the trip. This is the day we tried Bull's Testicle Goulash and Josie burnt her ass and stomach. Silly girly.

And last but not least... Hideout Festival and Zagreb!

On Novalja, Isle of Pag with 11 other members of the Preston crew. Probably the best festival I've ever been to.

Danny and Ki living it up on the first day. This was at a pool party with a live DJ set (goodness knows who it was) where we danced like crazy and drank tasty but pricey cocktails.

Sunrise at 6am. I saw four of these during the five day festival. Not bad for a girl who didn't even like house music before she went.

(Almost) Everyone together in Zagreb, which pretty much acted as a recovery session for the festival. Despite the criticisms it's had I actually really liked the city, which is much more chilled out than others so a welcome break on a busy trip.

And that just about sums up my last two years worth of travelling. Looking back at the post I really haven't done too badly have I? Especially considering I had to cancel two trips to Madrid and Dublin. I'm really excited for my cruise round the Canary Islands in August now :D Once again, thanks so much for reading (I wouldn't be a proper Brit if I wasn't excessively grateful now would I?), it really is quite flattering that so many of you want to read my thoughts, documentaries and rants. You're the best! :)

Foodie Nightmares

Last week a put a tweet out asking for ideas of what to base this post on. My favourite was the suggestion to compare all the different types of cakes I've tried throughout my travels (for anyone who doesn't know, that is A LOT of cake). I originally started out by making a post with all my 'Foody Favourites', a list of all the amazing food and drink I've tried whilst travelling, as I wanted to be indiscriminate to all those crazy cake-haters out there. However, I've been ill recently and had a particularly bad night last night, so in an attempt to make myself and you lot giggle (and probably cringe a little too) here's a low down of my foody horror stories from my travels thus far.

Bus ride from Lima to Cusco, Peru - Chicken, Rice and Jam?

Imagine this. You arrive in a new country, a new continent in fact and you're just about to embark on a 24 hour bus journey. You're tired and frustrated because the bus company have messed you around so you had to pay for your ticket twice. You're throwing up from altitude sickness because you're around 3000km higher up than you're used to and you've not eaten a proper meal in a few days because you've been struggling with changing your dollars to soles. All you want is something bearable to eat that will fill you up. And this arrives. Because I'm an idiot and chicken is like my kryptonite, I decided that the pinkish bit in the middle was nothing to worry about, 'they must just make it like that' in Peru. I wasn't even brave enough to touch the jam thingy. As you can imagine, it all came back up rather swiftly.

Nashville, Tennessee, USA - Cheesy Fries

You'd expect Americans to be the experts in Cheesy Fries, but this cheese was possibly the worst I'd ever tasted. It was the glue-your-mouth-together-and-burn-your-tongue-but-not-in-a-good-way kind, that was more sickly than yummy. I can still taste it to this day... *shudders*

NYC, New York, USA - Large Chicken Nuggets Meal

This one is more of a rant at the RIDICULOUS portion sizes served in the USA. Here I'm sat with a large McDonald's consisting of 20 chicken nuggests, a portion of chips double that you'd get in a large meal in the UK and a drink so large that four of us struggled to finish it. It's insane. As someone who hates waste I had to soldier through and finish everything, feeling rather frumpy afterwards. Darn my, 'when in Rome' attitude.

Nice, France - Mussels in Curry Sauce

I'm sure this one doesn't need to much explanation as the description of the meal itself sounds unappealing to almost anyone who has tried mussels before. Unfortunately, Tom hadn't. In his defense, he did manage to work his way through a pretty impressive amount of them.

Bus ride from Copacabana, Bolivia to Juliaca, Peru - Bag of Cheese and Potatoes

You'd think that from our initial experience with Peruvian bus food we'd have learned our lesson. However just two months later, here we are again. This was a moment of desperation, we hadn't eaten for almost 16 hours and weren't going to get to eat for another four. So when these STREET VENDERS - I know, I know - got on the bus we decided to spend our last two soles (about 50p) on this bag of mystery food. Our logic? Well there was no meat in it, so we figured that there was no harm in trying. And the cheese was actually alright. But if you've never tried cold, hard and uncooked, potatoes before... then don't. Even starving hungry we could hardly stomach these.

Braunschweig, Germany - Apfelglühwein

Whilst on an exchange in college, we visited the Christmas markets with our partners. They were lovely enough to buy us all some of their locally brewed apple mulled wine as they wanted us to sample something typically German. As we're all terribly British and therefore far too polite, we pretended we found it delicious, whilst secretly pouring it on to the floor or feeding it to another friend whilst backs were turned. It turns out however that we were perhaps a little too convincing, as they then preceded to buy us more. Selina, if you're reading this, I'm sorry :P

Arica, Chile - Pizza, apparently.

Whenever I see these pictures I can't help but chuckle. I showed them in a presentation I was giving to some of the classes I used to teach and the gasps of horror and the looks of disgust on the children's faces at the fact that this was allowed to be called a pizza, will forever accompany these images in my mind. It was also possibly the most expensive meal I ate in South America, around 4000 pesos, equivalent to about £5.30. Doesn't seem like a lot but for a backpacker on a tight budget, it's a bloody fortune.

Nashville, Tennessee, USA - Some kind of Burrito at Taco Bell

Now you might be tempted to suggest that from the examples I've given you already, that it's clearly safer to stick with what you know or chains with seemingly good reputations. No. Taco Bell is easily one of the worst places I ate in the USA. The taste was bland and uninteresting and it's one of those places that makes you feel so bad about yourself that you find yourself seriously considering giving up food and living solely off weight watchers smoothies for the rest of your life. It also has errr... other negative consequences. I'll let you use your imaginations on that one.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA - Coca Cola World

An all together different experience which I wrote extensively about in April, was our trip to Coca Cola world. Besides the trip being a rather terrifying one, it turns out that their brainwashing techniques actually work. As more of a Sprite girl myself, Coke has never really appealed to me, however I found myself ordering it impulsively for the next few weeks without really knowing why. Once again I am warning you, steer clear of that place.

Milan, Italy - Limoncello

Let's just say that the night we drank this three of us ended up vomiting, a lot. It is not worth buying Limoncello at 2.99 euros a bottle, even if you are on a tight budget. Especially if you intend to play drinking games with it. Never again.

And that's about all I can think of for now. It'd be cool to hear of anyone else's stories so comment and let me know. I'll need more ideas for blog posts too, so keep them coming. Also, I'm a big fan of comments and I don't get too many at the moment ;) *hinthint*

If you were disappointed and wanted some actual advice on where to eat on your travels as opposed to where to avoid, the 'Foody Favourites' post has been completed and archived, so if it's requested I'll just put it up. Otherwise I'll bring it out one day when inspiration is failing me.

SURFING

Aside from the 5 hour bus ride on Wednesday, the majority of the last four days has been spent chilling out on various beaches.

Arica was really lovely, we had such a good time there relaxing (I'm beginning to learn the difference between relaxation and lazyness) and swimming in the pacific. It's such a nice place to swim, even if it is freezing. We also took a few beach pics in an attempt to make everyone at home jealous. I hope it works.

The bus to Iquique was pretty horrible, for some reason Chileans like to close the windows to make the bus even more stuffy and ROASTING HOT. Evie and I also got taken off the bus by three policemen and were questioned about whether we were smuggling drugs inside of us... It was so scary. We were so relieved when we finally arrived at the hostel. Which is SO CHEAP and about half a minute from the BEEEEEEEACH (which is even nicer here than in Arica) :D

It's such a nice city to explore. There is loads of colonial architecture and the main square has a beautiful memorial with fountains around it.

We explored the markets a little and invested in a few bits of jewellery, before having a lovely wander along the beach. We've also discovered this awesome german cafe just around the corner from the hostel that does incredible burgers and cake. And I do love german cake <3 Yesterday I had my first SURFING LESSON and it was EPIC. I had so much fun, I forgot just how much I love watersports. I managed to stand up on the board too, I was rather proud of myself. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the experience, but if i get a chance to have another lesson I'll try and get some then! The rest of the day we spent on the beach. It may seem that we're doing very little at the moment, but we're just making the most of our last few beach days since we're heading in land to San Pedro de Atacama on Sunday. Wandering down the beach we came across some cool graffiti.

Pretty impressive eh?

And then we watched the sunset... it was so beautiful!

Face Plant #3

This one was slightly less epic than my others as there were very few witnesses, just the two guys who work here. I was literally just walking this time, no where special just around the hostel half asleep this morning. I managed to stub my toe on one of the floor tiles whilst falling, but managed to swiftly pick myself up again, thinking nothing of it. However once I sat down I noticed I'd sliced my big toe open and was dripping blood everywhere. Lovely.

One of the guys who works at the hostel helped me to make a makeshift plaster for it until I could get upstairs to my first aid kit (Maris Mercer, you life saver!) as he quite understandably didn't want me to get blood everywhere. It's not too bad at the moment, I just can't put it on the floor but that's not too much hassle. I'm quite impressed with myself for going so long without a fall to be honest and I could have done something so much worse. Health and safety isn't exactly South America's forte.

Heading to the beach soon to join in with some labour day celebrations. And apparently salt water is good for open wounds? I'll just have to try my best to not get sand in it.

We made it to CHILAYYYYY

It's been a little while since I last posted (sorry about that!!) but I'll try and get back on track. I don't really have any excuses for not posting, I've just had a few very lazy days.

After one night at The Point in Arequipa we decided to move hostels to the Wild Rover because unfortunately it was no where near as good as the one in Cusco. It had just been moved (it must have been VERY recently) and the hostel was empty with zero vibe. I mean it has the potential to get better in time, but it really wasn't what we were looking for.

During the day on Thursday Evie and I went exploring and wandered up to the viewing platform for a view of the volcano 'El Misti' which was really incredible. I'd love to have been able to do a trek up it but my asthma has been so bad at altitude it would not have been the brightest idea (boooooo).

In the evening there was a UV party at our hostel and a swedish guy called Jonathon invited us to join his table. We had such a good night since drinks were at criminally low prices - s/6 for two vodka oranges, that's less than 2 quid!! - and ended being covered in UV paint. Apparently I'm awesome at pool when I've had a drink and managed to thrash an irish and american guy along with the kiwi guy called Simon who's now travelling with us. They even played some epic music like Rage Against the Machine and Ramstein which makes a lovely change from some of the crazy club music over here. So all in all we had a very good night!!

Friday was spent recovering from the lack of sleep from the night before, though we did venture out for a short while to look at some of the local architecture and the massive food market.

I was so tired I couldn't stay up for very long on Friday to socialise. However the early night was very much appreciated since we had to get up at 6am on Saturday in order to make our 7am bus to ARICA, CHILAYYYYYYY. That's right, we've successfully crossed the bordered and have spent the last few days lounging on the beach and exploring the new town.

The currency here is a bit crazy, for example we got some epic ice creams that cost $1650 each. Which is about 2 quid. How good is that??? It's difficult to get used to the fact that you aren't actually spending a small fortune on every meal. So we were devestated when we ordered Pizza for $3200 and THIS is what turned up.

Four layers of plastic cheese with no tomato puree, just slices of tomato and horrible crumbley bread. YUCK.


However Simon and I later ventured out and discovered a place called telepizza, which is a fraction of the price of the minging pizza place AND incredibley tasty. Just look at the difference.

So no contest, we're eating at telepizza for the rest of our time here :P